GOP presidential and congressional candidates can no longer point derisively at environmentalists and scientists as alarmist tree-huggers merely for asserting that global climate change is real and that human activity is playing a role. It turns out that most self-identified GOP voters feel the same way, according to new poll results by a Republican polling group.

The poll results are pretty exhaustive, and they're hard to challenge on the basis of pollster bias. After all, the poll was commissioned by a self-described conservative, businessman Jay Faison of North Carolina, and was conducted by three prominent Republican pollsters. Faison has pledged to spend $175 million to persuade his party that it should change its approach to climate change.

The results of this survey are pretty decisive. It's not as if Republicans are tepid and kinda-sorta leaning toward being maybe-but-not-quite convinced about the need for a change in environmental policy. Respondents were heavily in favor of the need for a political response that embraces an emphasis on clean energy, reduced air pollution and increased attention to the public-health effects of energy policies.

The poll was conducted Aug. 24-27 among 1,200 registered voters nationwide with an oversample -- that is, a safety margin -- designed to ensure that it truly represented Republican views. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.8 percent.

The poll was crafted in ways to offer respondents choices among differing candidates and positions. Clear majorities among self-identified GOP and conservative GOP respondents agreed that the climate is changing and human activity is either "contributing a lot" or "probably contributing a little " to the change. Only tiny minorities believe the entire issue is bogus.

Clear majorities also supported a switch to emphasis on clean energy, which respondents identified as meaning wind and solar power, as opposed to so-called clean coal and other sources that rely on carbon-producing fossil fuels.

But it's also worth noting that respondents prefer candidates who couch the argument in conservative terms of energy independence rather than a liberal platform that leans heavily on giving more power to the EPA and significantly boosting subsidies for clean energy. Which is to say, it's not like conservatives are all of a sudden going Prius on us.

One of several questions that attempted to couch environmental issues in terms conservatives could embrace.

These results do, however, serve as a warning to presidential candidates like Donald Trump and Ben Carson, who don't believe in climate-change science and don't think there's a human dimension worth considering when setting environmental policy.

Those candidates are out of touch with their electorate, and they can no longer hide behind stock cynical, anti-environmentalist rhetoric in hopes of tapping into a disgruntled conservative mentality. Instead of being predictably disgruntled about so much government regulation, even Republicans are getting worried about the same things that the supposed lefties have been warning about for decades.